‘Hill brought the issue of sexual harassment into the American consciousness and the number of complaints more than doubled between 1991 and 1998.’
Photograph: Greg Gibson/Associated Press

The tableau of the lone woman testifying before a congressional committee of white men has become iconic. It is the dominant image in Confirmation, the gripping HBO film about Anita Hill’s testimony in the Clarence Thomas hearings before the Senate judiciary committee in 1991, which premieres on Saturday.

There is a scene in the film where the camera focuses on the ornate chandeliers in the Senate hearing room and then zooms in on Kerry Washington, the actress playing Hill, wearing that unforgettable turquoise dress suit.

I was in the room when the real Anita Hill testified. At the time, I, too, was struck by the contrast between her vivid testimony about how Thomas described pornographic films, including one starring Long Dong Silver, and the formal setting, the crystal-laden, mahogany Russell Caucus Room where Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment against Thomas were heard.

After the hearings ended and Thomas was confirmed as a US supreme court justice, I spent three years investigating the confrontation between Hill and Thomas. With Jane Mayer, I co-authored a book, Strange Justice, which concluded, based on evidence we unearthed, that Hill was the truth-teller. (I was asked by HBO to review the script of Confirmation for historical accuracy, which I did without pay.)

Although those hearings were a generation ago, Confirmation brought to mind more recent congressional proceedings with a lone woman witness facing a mainly white, male set of inquisitors, and another striking outfit, this time dark purple. Hillary Clinton was the star of this show trial, the Benghazi hearings last fall.

Both sets of hearings were billed as fact-finding exercises, but turned out to be poisonous displays of partisanship. The Republican attack machine was turned, full force, on both witnesses. With stoicism and poise, both Hill and Hillary withstood the onslaught to fight other, more important battles.

Over the years, the two women have become feminist icons. Hill brought the issue of sexual harassment into the American consciousness and the number of complaints more than doubled between 1991 and 1998. Hillary made bettering the lives of women and children the centerpiece of her work, from her days as first lady of Arkansas to serving as secretary of state. In what was called “The Year of the Woman” in 1992, four female Democrats were elected to the Senate and 28 women were elected to the House of Representatives, more than doubling the total number. They called themselves the Anita Hill class. Clinton, of course, is aiming higher in her second bid to become the first female president of the United States.

To a younger generation, this can all seem stale. When my students visit my office in Harvard, with a big poster of the cover of Strange Justice, most of them have no idea what the book is about. They were not yet born when Hill made her explosive accusations against Thomas. Sexual assault on campus looms far larger for them than sexual harassment in the workplace. Some are blasé about Clinton’s candidacy and the prospect of a female president.

Hill is certainly not jaded. She thinks a female president would be an important role model for younger women. She also hopes that Confirmation will focus new attention on the continuing problem of sexual harassment. “Sexual harassment is still a problem and the story is all too familiar to young people who have tried to challenge it whether in the workplace and on college campuses,” she told me in a recent email. “The harassing behavior in some cases is taking different forms because of technology, emails and social media, but it’s just as harmful.”

“Granted we’re more aware of the problem,” she added, “though some still want to deny it, it’s not clear that we are completely responsive to those who are victims and we don’t seem to know how to significantly reduce its frequency.” She cited shocking statistics, including a poll by Cosmopolitan in which one in three women between 18 and 34 said they had been sexually harassed at work.

The Anita Hill of today is far more self-assured and politically savvy. Back in 1991, she naively thought she could come to Washington, get a fair hearing of her allegations in the Senate and return to her sedate life as a law professor in Oklahoma. Those illusions were shattered when the Republicans, with brutal determination, portrayed her as an erotomaniac who put pubic hair in her students’ exam books. The Democrats were so cowed during the hearings that they did not call Hill’s best witnesses, including Angela Wright, played commandingly in the film by Jennifer Hudson, who also said that Thomas harassed her. Sitting practically mute, they utterly failed to come to Hill’s defense as the Republicans pilloried her. One Democratic senator, Patrick Leahy, told me after the hearings that he was haunted by this failure.

Given such dynamics, it is not at all surprising that polls taken during the hearings and immediately after showed that more people believed Thomas than Hill. But a year later, those numbers had reversed. So the attack machine could not let go of her.

Confirmation ends with Hill being overwhelmed by the avalanche of supportive mail she received when she arrived home. In reality, there were bomb threats and calls for her ouster from the faculty of the University of Oklahoma law school. Then came a vile book, The Real Anita Hill by David Brock, portraying her as a liar who was “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty”.

Brock also came after Mayer and me and tried to prove we had made up many things we reported in our book. He tried to force one of our sources to recant what she had told us about Thomas’s interest in pornography.

Clinton has been grist for what she once called “the vast, rightwing conspiracy” since her husband became president. From her first days in the White House she was portrayed as a corrupt Lady Macbeth. With no illusions about how politics operates, her hide had to toughen faster than Hill’s and she has become a pretty good knife-fighter herself. In another bit of history that eerily ties Hill and Hillary together, Brock has changed his political stripes and become a trusted member of Clinton’s inner circle. He also apologized to Anita, to me and to Jane.

What Confirmation reminds us is that Washington DC has rarely been a place that respected women’s words, or their authority. Perhaps this is the year that finally changes.